She developed her own techniques that included filling balloons with plaster and modelling objects by submerging them in water or blowing air into them. She began experimenting with casting with balloons, a process she called “gravistimulation”. She poured liquid plaster inside a small balloon and shaped it, meaning she was able to model abstract forms using a combination of gravity, air pressure and touch, often placing the forms in water. She could repeat this process quickly, producing a number of both solid and delicate artworks. Later, in the 1980s, she used the outside of inflated balloons as a surface to pour plaster over, before allowing the material to solidify and the balloon to eventually burst. She called this process “pneumatic casting” and described it as “a tiny void full of a tiny infinite universe”.
The artist used other processes too, balloons filled with plaster were bound with ropes or formed by touch, immersing in water, or pressing objects into them, like stone, or wood. The best ones are bound by string and rope, knotted and folded over themselves. They’re the most narrative works here, filled with stories about human relationships, how we tie ourselves to one another and become bound and constrained in the process. (timeout).
She toyed with nature a lot too, finding relief from Czechoslovakia’s totalitarian regime in rivers and trees and rocks. The works made of plaster wrapped around stones are her best: collisions of soft and hard, fragile and unbreakable. They feel personal, vulnerable and deeply emotional.
The other big part of Bartuszova’s practice was public sculptures, and they look incredible. But there obviously aren’t any of them here, just photos and maquettes, so all you’re really left with in this show is her smaller sculptures and eventually the whole show just feels a little one-note. It’s a lot of unctuous blobs and fragile shells, over and over. The metal sculptures, including some neat puzzle pieces, don’t have the same impact as the plaster ones, and the canvas works are genuinely a little ugly.
There’s just not a huge amount of depth here, so all the beauty on display ends up feeling just skin – or maybe eggshell – deep.
Plinth.uk.com (2022) If you want to make something but you don’t have much time, often you have to cut corners. You have to use what you have to hand. In the 1960s, Maria Bartuszová’s time was squeezed by childcare and working to commission, and what she had to hand were children’s party balloons and condoms. She repurposed them into sculptural vessels, filling the inflatables with plaster and letting the pull of gravity or the pressure of water mould them into strange shapes; dense droplets. So, from the start her sculptures grew out of play — both childish and erotic — and relied on natural processes and chance. The method and the material perfectly align to produce pale bulbous plaster forms that feel at once like cute and tactile toys, and like ancient organic structures – raindrops, dew, seeds, eggs and grains.
Bartuszová’s sculptures thrum with the uncanny. They are everything and nothing; bodies and hollows and shells and fragments and weird eruptions. They seem geological, in the sense of abiding by the logic of the earth, yet also seem designed precisely for a human scale. On many of the small, early sculptures the traces of Bartuszová’s process are clearly visible — knotted balloon lips and drip points immortalised in stone. It is impossible not to translate them, Rorschach test style, into bits of embodiment — belly buttons, nipples, fleshy openings – but they also remain static. Looking at them feels like finding faces in tree bark and shell patterns, or, indeed, like calling a balloon’s opening its ‘neck’. In other words, her works reveal the interconnected nature of humans and our environment: our bodies, plant bodies, animals, rocks and rain all made up of curves and globules; all strange living shapes.
Tate Modern’s new exhibition of Bartuszová’s sculptures is suitably understated for an artist who almost exclusively worked in a monochromatic palette of plaster, silver and bronze. However, it also expertly uncovers the depth of thought and true range of an artist who, despite being prolific, remains elusive. Bartoszová died on December 22, 1996, but her work wasn’t presented to international audiences until more than a decade later, in 2007. Even now, years on, she is a mysterious figure that even the Tate catalogue struggles to flesh out fully. Like her pale sculptures, Bartuszová seems ghostly, yet there are a few details that gesture towards her artistic obsessions, as keys gesture towards locks.
Again, it seems that play was often Bartuszová’s starting point. In one of the exhibition’s side rooms a small plaster sculpture leans on a cylindrical leg of sorts, metal bars crossing its flat front: a model for a playground climbing frame. Near it is a model for a slide that looks something like a bundle of intestines. Elsewhere, the elongated droplet of one of her earliest works, titled simply Rain (1963), is echoed by the bronze fountain Bartuszová designed for the Institute for Physically Disabled Children. In these works, and in her monumental reliefs for the Southern Slovak Paper Mill and Eastern Slovak’s Steelworks, Bartuszová seems intent on bringing the beautiful, intriguing, uncanny and experimental to functional institutions and industrial structures — bringing art to life.
Yet, while these projects provided her with a counterpoint to her studio work, as well as the opportunity to realise her ideas on a vast public scale, at the same time, the Cold War closed Košice off from contact with Western Europe, and Bartuszová worked in relative seclusion, with few opportunities aside from state commissions to exhibit her work during her lifetime. In 1968 she defined two of the major influences on her creative work as her ‘feelings of anxiety in totalitarianism, and the Cold War tensions.’ While her work may evoke play, wonder and imagination, it was also motivated by instability and a deep unease.
In the 1980s, Bartuszová got into destruction. Perhaps it was personal (her marriage was breaking down), perhaps it was political (those Cold War tensions), but she shifted from using balloons as cocoons for her plaster to using them as weapons. Instead of pouring plaster into inflatables, she began pouring it over the outside of them, before forcing the balloon to burst; the plaster cast to explode. The resulting forms are fragile shells; hollow and broken as if a creature has just emerged from them and disappeared. Often, Bartuszová placed these shells inside one another, creating what she referred to as ‘endless eggs.’ On the wall at the entrance of the exhibition is another phrase of Bartuszová’s that describes these stratified nests: ‘a tiny void full of a tiny infinite universe’ — empty and infinite at the same time.
She also began making work of constraint. Using ropes, strings and hoops to bind and suspend her pale globules – making them contort like flesh in corsets — Bartuszová suggested these ties ‘could be symbolic of human relationships or the constraints that limit the possibilities of living things – the diseases and stresses that undermine what is alive and already restricted by its lifespan.’ A particularly striking work layers wooden blocks and blobs of plaster in a teetering Jenga-like tower, the pale rounded forms squeezed and squashed. It looks like it could topple at any moment; like the white stone is seeping, escaping and alive. And yet, it cannot get unstuck, cannot wriggle free from its restraints.
From cheap materials, Bartuszová made work that manages to evoke emptiness, fear and destruction, while also singing of rebirth, play and transformation. Her sculptures – ostensibly so simple — speak to the fragility of existence but also the resilience of life. This is perhaps best captured by two photographs in Tate’s display. In one, a monumental spherical sculpture seems torn at the centre; ripped into two forms which balance gently on top of each other. Metamorphosis, Two-Part Sculpture was created by Bartuszová in 1982 to stand at the entrance to the Košice crematorium. It is a vast stand against death, but it also seems to gesture to endurance, to the eternal, to a great balancing act between life and its end. It is a world ripped asunder, and it is a great monument to transformation and renewal. On another wall, the second photograph is of a young boy wearing sunglasses. In his hands is one of Bartuszová’s bulbous and strange sculptures, and his face is breaking into a cheeky and thrilling smile. The photo is from a workshop with blind and partially sighted children for whom Bartuszová created organic forms, designed to be explored by hand. Tactile toys, ancient structures, and infinite universes, all at once.
By Eloise Hendy
My opinion starting to grow:
The works are inspired by the natural world.
This efficient method allowed her to combine childcare and making pieces to commission as well as her independent work. Resourcefulness was key in gathering props in a time of material scarcity: she cast her models in small rubber balloons, condoms or even car tyres and weather-observation balloons. These shrewd techniques propelled Bartuszová closer to her desired “perfection of the form”, but also resulted in a series of haptic puzzles.
She shaped individual pieces of her multi-part sculptures one by one, pressing freshly mixed malleable plaster against hard, completed sections to create a tightly fitting arrangement. Some of these works resemble germinating seeds or raindrops hitting the surface of water. These spatial compositions were built to be touched, picked apart and reassembled. (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/sep/19/maria-bartuszova-an-artist-of-the-fragile-who-was-anything-but)
Bartuszová was willing to take on challenges of all sizes. Her sprawling portfolio of artworks includes projects of all scales, from swollen plaster forms that could sit in the palm of a hand, to large public works, including a children’s climbing frame and slide, and a stone and bronze sculpture for the courtyard of Košice Technical University’s hall of residence. She also created work compressed by stones, as well as wood, and hollowed shapes. Juxtaposing the delicacy of her plaster work from the 1960s – a period where her sculptures were designed to be taken apart and reassembled – her work in the 1980s resembled abandoned cocoons and empty shells.
On the Tate website:
From raindrops and eggs to the human body, Bartuszová took inspiration from organic forms and the natural world around her, including growth, decay, wind, rain and melting snow. By the early 1960s, her more abstract sculptures were inspired by shapes found in nature. Her early sculptures also look like living forms, from germinating seeds to dew drops.
Towards the end of her career, Bartuszová began to place her works in the trees in her garden, to photograph them.
‘I would also like to realise more things directly outside – to connect, to merge my work in the work of nature organically.’
TACTILE MAKING
Maybe because I had so little time besides working on commissions and childcare, maybe because of that I had the idea, while playing with inflatable balls, to blow liquid plaster into a balloon.
–Maria Bartuszová, after 1985
In the 1960s and 1970s, Bartuszová repurposed small rubber balloons and condoms to cast her plaster sculptures. She used the gravitational pull on the weight of poured plaster to shape the final pieces, often submerging the forms in water while working. She called this system ‘gravistimulated shaping’. The early sculptures made using this method evoke natural and living forms, such as dew drops and wheat grains.
In the 1980s, Bartuszová arrived at a new practice of plaster shaping, which she termed ‘pneumatic casting’. She blew air into balloons – at times using large meteorological balloons – and poured plaster over their surface. She combined the effects of gravity, air pressure and touch during the casting process. This allowed her to create empty, negative volumes and ever more fragile, hollow shapes such as shells and eggs. Bartuszová later embraced destruction and impermanence through her creation of large shell-reliefs and ephemeral works in nature.
TRANSFORMATIONS OF SHAPE
Angular, sharp, inorganic shapes give the impression of coldness; rounded, organic shapes appear warm and, when touching, can create the feeling of a gentle caress – maybe even an erotic embrace.
–Maria Bartuszová, 1983
This room brings together the different approaches Bartuszová developed from the 1960s to the 1980s. The full and ample shapes of early works from the 1960s burst with life, sprouting multiple forms. She describes them as ‘a drop of water, grain seed, buds of germinating plants… forms evoking cellular division, or cells touching.’ The later works include compressed and bound materials, perforated ovals and broken shell-like reliefs.
Beginning in the 1960s, Bartuszová wanted to evoke emotional behaviours through her sculptures. Guided by intuition, play, therapy and meditation, she created multi-part objects to be touched and assembled as a puzzle or ‘folder’. They were used innovatively in expressive workshops for blind and partially-sighted children. These mostly small and rounded sculptures are seductive, palpable and tactile, acting as prompts to develop aesthetic imagination.
Bartuszová’s primary medium was plaster. At a later point, she cast many works again, either in bronze or a less expensive metal like aluminium. Early bronze casts, such as Grain, were small enough to hold in two hands, while assembled plaster ‘folders’ were cast in aluminium. For a short period, she experimented with a more geometric language combined with organic forms in a series of aluminium reliefs.
EMOTION, DESTRUCTION, EXPERIMENTATION
I work vicariously with my hands, with the help of balloons and bent surfaces. Principles: touch, taut-full, taut-hollow, positive, negative, contrast, placing, multiplying of one.
–Maria Bartuszová, 1980s
From the 1980s, Bartuszová began using her ‘pneumatic shaping’ technique: pouring plaster over inflated rubber balloons to produce a cast, before allowing them to burst. The pressure of the burst balloons created disintegrated shell and egg-like forms. Unlike the full volume of her earlier sculptures, here an outer shell frames an empty core, signalling a place of refuge and rebirth. Bartuszová placed these thin egg-shaped shells inside one another, layering them to create what she referred to as ‘endless eggs’. They suggest living organisms and express spiritual growth, time and eternity. Works which expose the hollow interiors of the shells, such as the egg reliefs, evoke fragility and vulnerability.
Bartuszová developed these ideas fully after moving to a house in Košice with a studio and a large garden on a hillside. The concept of creating art open to nature probably emerged with this new space. Bartuszová could freely and more generously experiment with plaster casting and use the surrounding garden to install her objects such as Tree. She said, ‘I would also like to realise more things directly outside – to connect, to merge my work in the work of nature organically.’ For Bartuszová the studio was a spiritual and contemplative retreat, and the garden was a sanctuary. She continued to live with her daughters and worked in their family home until the end of her life.
INFINITE UNIVERSE
Branches, balloons, stones as a ‘pillar’, (drops), ‘layering’, winter, melting, spring, and germinating on the top. Stone.
–Annotation on a drawing by Maria Bartuszová, 1983–5
Bartuszová, as with many Czechoslovak artists in the 1970s living under a totalitarian regime, was drawn towards spirituality. Her library contained books on Chinese and Japanese art and culture, east Asian philosophy including Taoism and Buddhism, and samizdats (a form of self-publishing used to circulate censored material in the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc countries) on Zen Buddhism. She took an interest in the relationship between scientific theories and ancient traditions, reading literature on psychoanalysis, social psychology and living systems.
From the end of the 1970s, the reflection of natural processes in Bartuszová’s work gradually became more personal and more focused on the questions of existence, in part relating to challenges in her marriage. Nature gave Bartuszová a setting for therapeutic and meditative contemplation. She found this in movement, picking up pebbles and tree branches, feeling the rain, wind and snow, or observing nature – as she documented in drawings and photographs. This inspired her to create the plaster and stone objects and reliefs for the larger cycle of works named Melting Snow. She inserted living and inanimate natural substances, such as stones and tree branches, into the solidifying mass of plaster. Certain works from this period take the shape of tied-up, bound and pressed forms. For Bartuszová, this symbolised both the bonds and constraints of human relationships.
RELATIONSHIPS
The ropes, strings, and hoops that sometimes bind the rounded shapes could be symbolic of human relationships or the constraints that limit the possibilities of living things – the diseases and stresses that undermine what is alive and already restricted by its lifespan.
–Maria Bartuszová, 1980s
Every living organism forms a relationship with its environment. Bartuszová believed that personal and familial relationships were interconnected with nature, art and culture. She integrated social and ecological themes in her art with knowledge of science and philosophy. She expressed these relationships through sculpture as a trace of a moment, captured in matter, in a tactile format. Her work is not a rational reduction of natural forms. It is a realisation of her thinking through sensual shapes and extended research through sculptural practice.
Bartuszová’s work from the 1980s continues with the themes of binding and pressure. It incorporates acrylic, string, bronze, rubber and wood to form contrasts between hard and soft, dominant and submissive. Only a handful of exhibitions took place during Bartuszová’s lifetime. Her first solo exhibition in 1983 included bronze and aluminium casts from the 1960s and 1970s but not the plaster originals. After the breakdown of her marriage in 1984 she directed her efforts and energy to her next solo exhibition in 1988. During this particularly active period she created some of her most poignant and technically complex works in plaster. These included bound and endless eggs, eggshell objects and reliefs, large minimalist reliefs and site-specific installations.
SCULPTURES FOR PUBLIC PLACES
Influences (on creative work): Feelings of anxiety in totalitarianism, and the Cold War tensions. The ban on abstract art in totalitarianism increased its importance.
–Maria Bartuszová, 1968
Bartuszová and her husband Juraj Bartusz, also a sculptor, moved to Košice with their daughter in 1963, after finishing their studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. The city was rapidly developing as a cultural and industrial centre, with new work and housing opportunities. As part of the Communist programme of cultural modernisation in the city, new mass housing projects and public sites included commissions for public artworks.
From the outset, Bartuszová was keen not only to exhibit her work but to secure public commissions. In 1964 she joined the artist’s union and, as a member, was able to work as a professional artist. Although artists were dependent on the totalitarian state, Bartuszová worked on commissions even if they did not have an ideological purpose. She made significant commitments to public projects as a counterpoint to her studio practice. Throughout her career, she took on official state-funded commissions for buildings, monuments, playgrounds, fountains and sculptures in public spaces in Slovakia, working in collaboration with stonemasons and specialist craftspeople. These projects provided a vital source of income but also the opportunity to realise her ideas on a monumental scale.
Using her garden:
Bartuszová, she became a member of the artist’s union, which allowed her to secure commissions for many public sculptures in Košice, where new public art was needed for the ambitious mass housing programme in the city. Today many of her artworks can be seen in public spaces across Slovakia. The artist used her garden in her Košice house as the location for impressive art installations, which allowed her to display sculptures on her own terms and connect her works with nature.